At first they came for the smokers but I did not speak out as I did not smoke. Then they came for the binge drinkers but I said nothing as I did not binge. Now they have an obesity strategy.

Friday, June 09, 2017

Wrong again

Yes, I got it wrong. Pretty comprehensively wrong. It's a talent I have.

At this point everybody who did get it wrong about the election starts writing pieces about how, although they got it wrong, the fact that they were wrong proves that they were right all along. I can't disappoint the tiny number of readers of this blog.

Over the years I have been banging on about two things. The first is the need for a new and credible left political economy to challenge orthodoxy. The time for it is now. There is an electoral coalition for the reinvention of a neo-Keynesian social democratic settlement.

More recently, I have been saying that the significant demographic divide in politics is generational. The young voted. This is a great moment of hope, because the previous assumption that there was a realignment where a left political economy was tied to social conservatism is wrong. The new generation of voters is socially liberal, pro Europe, and relaxed about immigration.

Now, some caveats.

First, I haven't changed my views of Corbyn, and especially his foreign policy and support for awful movements and regimes. They have been formed over thirty years. There is still a fight to be had over where Labour stands.

Second, this wasn't a victory for Corbyn alone. In fact it wasn't even a victory, he lost. Both the Conservative and Labour votes increased. But it is one of those moments when political change became a real possibility. And the "progressive majority" has returned. Though the country is polarised, a majority didn't vote for the right. This was a success for the Labour Party as a whole. It was a campaign fought locally as well as centrally. Right, left, and centre candidates worked hard and did well. And Labour didn't win, they came close, and they recovered amazingly from a terrible position. Think back to how bad the local election results were just a month ago! Retreating into sectarianism would throw this opportunity away.

Third, I am old. This is a bit of a bugger, but true. And like a lot of older people, I can lapse into pessimism. I don't feel like that today though. I feel that there is an opportunity now, but probably for people younger than me. But if I am old, I am younger than the leadership. This is still an interregnum. What comes next is what matters.

Finally, and this is the most important, there is Brexit. It was the reason for the election and never mentioned. This is an extraordinary constitutional and economic revolution to be undertaken with a flimsy mandate that has just been made flimsier. This is the defining issue. It has the potential to create huge damage. Where is our strategy for that? Ian Dunt put it well before the election:

It is not an elephant in the room. It is a stampede approaching at speed, to which we have stared, shrugged and continued with our little tea party. If historians do bother to assess what happened in this election they will be left aghast at our complacency.

1 comment:

I did think it would be closer and far from a landslide. I still know a lot of younger people through having taught them. You can't blame them for having short memories. They have only been alive so long. They have placed their hope in Corbyn, pretty overwhelmingly, or so I suppose. I voted Labour as Labour, not as The Republic of Corbynia. What else were we to do?

And even if Corbyn's Labour got in we are not Venezuela. We are not reliant on an oil economy and are tied into many other agreements It would be tough for a while, but if we suddenly had a spate of terrorist attacks or a rise in overt ant-Semitism (chiefly the former) the ground they currently stand on would start to vanish pretty quickly. Or so I imagine.

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About Me

This is the work avoidance strategy and ego trip of Peter Ryley, who has just retired, despite being far too young, from working in lifelong learning, latterly at the University of Hull, and from teaching part-time at Manchester Metropolitan University. I live partly in Manchester and the rest of the time in Pelion, Greece. I continue to research and write on the history of Anarchism, and have frequent rants about the importance and current parlous state of adult education.